The Three Strands of Life

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Establishing your friendship is something to aim for during a life engagement to marriage. Your engagement period is the time to discover each other and begin to cherish each other. You are engaging in the process of becoming best friends for life. Building a trusting friendship takes time, patience, and kindness. Treat your engagement as a gift that will give you happiness for years to come.

During your engagement, you will probably have one or more wedding showers where you receive gifts from your friends to help with the life and home you will be building. If you are like most couples you create a wedding registry and mark down the things that you really need to make your new home together a place of comfort and security. For example, you may need new linens -- towels, bedsheets, a comforter. Or kitchenware - china, silverware, cooking utensils, cookware and more.

You really receive a gift when you unwrap it and use it often. That's when it means the most to you. You accept the good will of another person and put it to good use. It's like having a favorite sweater you wear on a fall day. The sweater may be worn in the elbows from so much use; but it has become a part of you. You just can't bear giving it away.

Did you know that you have three precious gifts at your fingertips that can help you journey through good days and tough days during your engagement? We'll explain that in another article, but first let us share something with you.

Your Gift of Life

Every human being, including you, began your life inside your mother's womb. You started out as a union of two cells, that grew into a fetus, an unborn baby. You received all of your oxygen, food, vitamins, blood and everything you needed to grow through an umbilical cord attached to your mother's placenta. An umbilical cord is actually made up of three blood vessels surrounded by Wharton's jelly. Those blood vessels include two arteries and a vein.

For our entire life inside our mother's womb, we were connected to this lifeline of three strands. Our very existence depended on it. Moment by moment, day to day, week after week, each of the strands grew bigger and stronger. Life flowed to each of us through this connection and waste was eliminated. When we were born, the physical connection to our mother, the umbilical cord, was cut. We each became our own persons.